The engine that supports many successful organizations is enterprise software with its complex and diverse functions. Information is critical to strategic endeavors, so the right tools are more important than ever before.

Enterprise software encompasses a variety of functions, including asset management, business intelligence, CRM utilities, data processing, databases, financial applications, identity management, retail software, process management and resource planning. It can run on either individual machines or on centralized servers, whether in-house, located in the cloud or a hybrid combination.

Because the utilization and management of enterprise software continues to remain at the forefront of key business initiatives, Tech Pro Research has surveyed readers on the topic for the past few years.

Who is using enterprise software

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The use of enterprise software is increasing. More than two-thirds of survey respondents are currently using enterprise software, up from 50% in 2014's survey. And the larger the company, the more likely that it uses enterprise software, with 98% of companies with 1,000 or more employees either already using enterprise software, or planning to within the next 12 months, compared to 57% of companies with less than 50 employees.

New deployment of business functions for enterprise apps

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The most common functions where enterprise software was deployed during the past 12 months are databases (45%), storage (39%) and human resources (34%). Comparing back to 2014, mobile was chosen the most frequently at 44%, followed by big data at 31% and databases at only 12 percent.

As Scott Matteson wrote in the Tech Pro Research report, "It is interesting to note that the three least-picked selections in 2014 turned out to be the three most popular selections in 2015. Priorities and capabilities can change as plans merge with reality. It's also possible that enterprise software offerings in the mobile and big data sectors have not been on par with expectations, resulting in growth in other areas instead."

Preferred vendors

The survey also focused on preferred vendors. Microsoft, Google and Adobe Systems were by far the top three preferred vendors. Microsoft is dominating the enterprise software scene with Office 365 as the choice in fourth place. Microsoft's popularity has risen from 43% in 2013 to 56% in 2014 to 63% in 2015.

Google has also demonstrated some amazing gains in this area as well; although it was commonly chosen as an "other" choice in the past two years, in the 2015 report it was in use in half of the respondent organizations. Dropbox and LinkedIn enjoyed similar gains as well, barely mentioned last year and now in use at 26% and 22% of respondent organizations, respectively.

Conversely, vendors such as SAP, Oracle, JBoss (Red Hat) and CA Technologies have lost ground, with Oracle in particular, as it was among the top three vendor choices in 2013. In fact, usage of SAP and Oracle has been consistently decreasing since 2013, according to survey participants.

The future of enterprise software

Overall, the report shows that enterprise software is in an excellent position to thrive. There is a solid vendor base and there are high levels of user satisfaction. Find out more about where enterprise software is heading in the next year and download the full report from Tech Pro Research, Enterprise Software: Advantages, opportunities, challenges.

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